The National Sports Tribunal has blasted Gymnastics Australia for conducting a ‘sloppy and unfair’ investigation into multiple alleged claims of bullying levelled at an Olympic gymnastics coach.
Olga Belooussov was cleared of seven allegations of bullying made by a then-17-year-old gymnast, who had been coached by the trainer and her husband, Sasha.
In his findings, tribunal member Bruce Collins, KC, dismissed the allegations, which he said were ‘based upon trifles’ that had been magnified by the complainant, before he criticised Gymnastics Australia for its handling of the matter.
The incidents were alleged to have taken place over a period of four months in 2023. Belooussov is understood to have begun coaching the athlete when they were eight years old and stopped coaching the gymnast when they were 17.
The alleged complaints were made by the gymnast’s parents and Belooussov was first made aware of the claim in June, 2024.
Belooussov is an award-winning gymnastics coach having been crowned Gymnastics Australia’s International Level Coach of the Year on three occasions.
Olga Belooussov was cleared of seven allegations of bullying made by a then-17-year-old gymnast, who had been trained by coach and her husband, Sasha (both pictured)
The coach has guided multiple top athletes to win international medals including Georgia Goodwin (centre). Goodwin is not the complainant in the allegations and is not included in the complaint
The coach, who originally hails from Russia, has guided multiple top athletes to claim medals at major tournaments over the years. They include Georgia Goodwin, who won two gold medals at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and also represented Australia at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Alongside her husband Sasha, Belooussov, the pair have coached Aussie athletes to 45 international medals.
Goodwin is not the complainant in the allegations and is not included in the complaint.
The complaints were made only against Belooussov, with the parents of the athlete claiming that the coach had breached the governing body’s child safeguarding policy.
Twelve allegations were issued, but following an investigation by Gymnastics Australia, only seven of those claims were substantiated, with Belooussov later being issued with a breach notice. She was handed a six-month supervision order and required to attend training sessions.
Belooussov disputed that notice, and the matter was later brought to the National Sports Tribunal.
Among the claims, Gymnastics Australia had alleged that Belooussov had ignored the gymnast, not used her name when addressing her, spoken rudely to the athlete and referred to the gymnast and her team-mates as ‘princesses’ due to their frequent injuries.
Another of the allegations made against Belooussov included the coach allegedly: ‘putting [your] hand in front of the Complainant’s face and told them to stop talking back, then refusing to communicate with them.’
The National Sports Tribunal handed down its verdict in May, with the full report being published this month.
‘It is irrational to conclude that Mrs Belooussov’s part in each alleged situation could sustain a description of her as a “bully, a person who deliberately intimidates or persecutes those who are weaker”,’ Collins said.
Seven allegations were made against Belooussov (right), but the National Sports Tribunal has since cleared her of any bullying claims
‘The Gymnastics Australia Investigation Committee should have found that none of the complaints had been substantiated.
‘They were at best a collection of trivial circumstances which were exaggerated to imaginary heights and conjured up by an otherwise pleasant young person who was, on their own admission and on the evidence of other witnesses, prone to react adversely to stress and whose parent had made the initiating complaint.’
He also criticised Gymnastics Australia by claiming that a ‘proper consideration’ of the facts would have led to the conclusion that the coach had not bullied the athlete. He also noted that the federation had not employed legal counsel to assist in making its final submissions, while adding it had ‘made no independent attempt to support the charges’.
‘It is surprising that the body which initiated and progressed 12 serious charges which challenged the professional quality and integrity of Mrs Belooussov’s work should, in effect, make no independent attempt to support those charges when given the opportunity to do so in its Final Submissions.
‘Such a failure was not in accord with the critically important structure initiated by the federal government for the purpose of a rules-based approach to the fair resolution of sporting disputes and the sensible, practical foundation for the fair and proper resolution of sporting disputes.’
He added: ‘A proper and balanced consideration of those factors by Gymnastics Australia and the Investigation Committee should have led both bodies to conclude that none of the complaints remotely approached the description of bullying in the Policy and should have been dismissed at the threshold.
‘Instead, they were kept alive and taken forward by Gymnastics Australia in an overzealous approach which failed to balance the personal rights of the coach against unjustified, if not imaginary, complaints initiated by the parent of an impressionable young person who in any event saw themselves at the end of their career in gymnastics and was about to transfer her competitive instincts to another quite different sporting endeavour.’
Collins then claimed that Gymnastics Australia’s investigation had been ‘unfair’ to Belooussov, stating that it had ‘lacked analysis’.
‘The tale of this investigation does no credit to Gymnastics Australia, nor to the policies it professes to promulgate,’ Collins said. ‘The Investigation Report was procedurally flawed, sloppy, unfair to Mrs Belooussov and without reasons. The Report was altogether lacking in analysis, it was not even an exercise in once over lightly.
‘Gymnastics Australia should analyse, critique, reorganise and re-calibrate the whole of its disciplinary structure as to properly give effect to a Policy which has been drafted so as to give effect to the modern necessity to stamp out bullying of all types.’
